garbage disposal keep old one or buy new?

PekeFebruary 10, 2013

My Insinkerator disposer works well currently. When we finish the cabinet installation should we reinstall the old one since it still works? I hate to put the money into a new one when the old still works well.

I just made this decision last week. I was set to go out and buy a new disposer, then when I removed the old one I thought why not just use this one till it dies? I did buy a new rubber splash guard/mounting gasket.

Keep it but make sure it is clean as a whistle while stored during reno. When my kitchen was destroyed by cabinet leak, the insurance company put DW, disposal and fridge in the garage to store for four months. I guess in the chaos nobody thought to run some ice cubes and lemons down to clear any lingering debris.
Let's just say that in that four months, the odor in the garage was horrible until we figured it out.

I had a really old one, and I decided to keep it, as it had never given us any trouble. It was literally the ONLY thing we kept from the old kitchen. When I finished hooking up the sink, I installed it, and looked forward to using the new sink. I turned the GD on (thankfully without having attached it to the drain) and it spewed forth great chunks of rusted metal! The storage period was not kind to the GD. The grinders ground themselves and the grinding chambers into bits!

Needless to say, Home Depot sold a new stainless steel GD that day, which was super quiet compared to the old one, even though it was 3x higher horsepower.

A dissenting viewpoint. When it does need to be replaced, will you be doing that yourself? Then keep it until it dies. But if you don't DIY, you'll pay in the remodel to have the old one installed and then when you replace it, you'll pay again for the new installation (and that will be a minimum one hour charge, if your plumber is like mine). Further, I went from a 1/2HP Insinkerator Badger to a 3/4HP Insinkerator Evolution ProCompact, and it was a huge improvement. So if it's relatively new, then keeping it makes sense, but if you may only have a couple more years, ditch it now and move up. In the past, my Insinkerators usually lasted about 10 years. Maybe I'm hard on them.

They don't take transplanting well at all. If it's over 2-3 years old replace it for sure. And there have been so many advances in disposal technology that the new Evolution series is practically a MUST in every kitchen remodel. They are amazingly quiet and powerful.

Speaking of GD's, the drain in our basement (near the kitchen sink pipes) backed up recently and we had to get someone to clear it. He said he loves GD's because they bring him so much business (so many clogged drains).

Never had a clogged GD and have had one almost all of my adult and even teenaged years.

I never thought about the best way to store my old GD during our reno. DH simply took it out of the old kitchen and my set it on the floor in the garage, where it lived uncovered for over a year while we reno'd. Still works great! Maybe I just got lucky.

I agree with Ginny -- a plumber's service call is so freakin' expensive, and a new Insinkerator Evolution only cost about $180. I was paying for install during the reno, anyway, whether it was to reinstall the old one or a new one. Makes the most sense to install a new one now. I think if they were pricier it would have been a bigger decision, but at $180 it was a no brainer for us. I also like it a lot better than the old one.